Today's applications, and in particular, some of today's game applications may be very large, sometimes in the gigabytes. Such large applications may take a considerable amount of time to download to a client device over a network. In addition, these large applications may take considerable time to load off of a computer readable medium such as a Compact Disc (CD), Digital Video Disc (DVD), or the like.
However, there is a desire in the game industry to be able to provide such applications to an end-user prior to its release. Providing a game application prior to release enables the game industry to foster interest in the game, and to enable early loads of the game application by the end-user. The intent of an early load is to minimize time to prepare the game for execution when it is finally available, post release. In addition, application providers may desire the capability of trickling the game application out to a customer base over an extended period of time before a release, and thereby reduce loads on their servers. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.